Novel Antiretroviral Drugs in Patients with Renal Impairment: Clinical and Pharmacokinetic Considerations.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has dramatically increased the survival of HIV-infected patients from Western countries reducing the incidence of opportunistic infections and AIDS-related malignancies, and improving the patients' quality of life compared with the pre-HAART era. HIV is thus now considered in the West as a chronic disease, with the majority of HIV-infected patients successfully reaching an optimal immune and virological outcome a few months after starting HAART. However, this switch from acute to chronic disease has been accompanied by an increased incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD), reported in up to 60% of HIV-infected patients. Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) is considered to play a significant role in the development of CKD in these patients. It has been proposed that tenofovir alafenamide (TAF), a prodrug formulation able to providing lower systemic and renal drug exposure, could potentially contribute to reduce the development of CKD in HAART-treated patients. On the other hand, the pharmacokinetics of some components of HAART can be significantly altered in HIV-infected patients developing CKD. TDF- or TAF-based antiretroviral regimens should be avoided in patients with a creatinine clearance of less than 50 or 30 mL/min, respectively. This review focuses on the pharmacokinetic changes of novel antiretroviral drugs in HIV-infected patients with renal impairment or requiring renal replacement therapy, and provides some suggestions on how to change drug doses in these clinical settings.